Pragmatic
by Cassandra Mulder
Summary: Feelings were simply chemicals in the brain reacting to each other, or so she told herself.


**Title:** Pragmatic  
 **Author:** Cassandra Mulder  
 **Rating:** T  
 **Spoilers:** General series, up through 3x07, Chaos Theory  
 **Classification:** Romance; angst; FitzSimmons  
 **Summary:** Feelings were simply chemicals in the brain reacting to each other, or so she told herself.  
 **Disclaimer:** Not mine. If they were, I would tuck the Science Babies into a cottage in Perthshire and let them be happy, rather than perpetually torturing them.  
 **A/N:** This is a little bit of... something. Still not sure what. Jemma started talking to me today, after I thought she never would, and these are apparently the things she wanted me to know. It's inspired by her video to Fitz, with some headcanon, and of course personal filling in of blanks. As far as actual canon, I can only go with what the show wants us to know now, so personal theories and conspiracy theories not included. Feedback is love!

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Jemma Simmons had always been a rather pragmatic sort of girl. It wasn't that she didn't feel, or appreciate the beauty in things, but she had learned a long time ago that those things could get overwhelming. Keeping things inside had become a habit, as well as rationalizing everything to its core as a scientist. Feelings were simply chemicals in the brain reacting to each other, or so she told herself.

She had been lonely for awhile at the Academy. She was fourteen when she started, and she had never been away from her parents so much in her short life. Mum and Dad were supportive of their "little genius", as her dad used to call her, but it was still hard. Most of the students were much older, and in some cases not nearly as intelligent. It made it difficult to relate.

Then, when she was fifteen, she saw Leopold Fitz. He seemed very quiet, very shy, but from the moment he arrived at the Academy he quickly gained a reputation for being one of the most brilliant students. He was her age, which was rare enough, but as they started having classes together, she also found he was her intellectual match.

She was also pretty sure he hated her.

Every time she showed him up, he would scowl at her across the room, and when the class was over he would gather up his things and quickly walk out. She was sure she was just hurting his male pride at first, and it became like sort of a game for her. You don't think girls can be as smart as you, Mr. Fitz? Watch this!

She introduced herself one day at lunch, finding him sitting in a poorly lit corner of the cafeteria alone, his eyes on a book, and his face in a ham sandwich.

"Hello," she said, maybe a little nervously. "I'm Jemma Simmons."

He barely looked up. "Leo Fitz," he replied, seemingly only because she had him cornered, quite literally. "I know who you are."

Silence.

"Well, then," she said awkwardly when it seemed like he wasn't going to continue. "Enjoy your lunch." She quickly turned on her heel and walked away.

His terseness left her undeterred. Whenever she saw him on campus, her eyes followed him, watching as he muttered equations to himself or fiddled with some prototype invention or other in his nimble hands. She tried to make herself stop, but something inside of her wouldn't let that happen. Somehow she knew they were supposed to be friends.

Then one day, he volunteered to be her partner in chem lab. Her mouth gaped open as he sat down beside her, and she tried to recover as quickly as she could.

She had been trying to recover ever since.

He fell into her life like the missing piece of a puzzle. Everything they did, they were better together. He always seemed to know what she was thinking, what she was going to say, and vice versa. When they began finishing each other's sentences, she hardly even noticed. It was just the way things were; how they were with them.

She saw boys occasionally, but she wouldn't have called it dating. Groping in utility closets, making out in cars, losing her virginity in a twin bed in her dorm room. It was hormones, that was all. Pesky chemicals that she had to find some way with which to deal, so she took it out on boys she knew could never interest her in any other way.

Not like Fitz did.

He was smarter than they were, which was important. He was funny. Beneath the gruff surface of their initial meeting, he was kind to a fault. He brought her tea when she was sick, and made sure she had enough blankets and comfort TV to get her through. He would sit with her at risk to his own health.

She made them sandwiches when they were up late studying for exams, and one night she hit upon one that he declared his favorite. She couldn't explain the warmth in the pit of her stomach as she watched him smile at something as simple as a meal she had made for him.

It was simply scientific that she wanted to know the exact color of his eyes, and the lines of his brow as they furrowed in concentration as he worked. She thought he was handsome in a way at which she would never tire of looking, but she kept that to herself. She would giggle at the way he could roll his r's when he was excited, and his tiny, meaningless tantrums when he couldn't get something just right. She fell asleep on his shoulder after Doctor Who, and woke up on a pillow, afghan tucked beneath her chin.

She couldn't count the ways she loved him, how she never wanted to be without him, except for the one way that never crossed her mind. She wouldn't let it.

It didn't go unnoticed that Fitz never left her side, never had a girlfriend; not so much as a dalliance. But they didn't talk about it. He could do what he wanted, and he would, whenever he was ready.

She never expected that it would be her.

When he began to stutter and sigh, look away when she looked at him, and when he was jealous but she refused to name it what it was, perhaps she should have seen it.

Maybe she should have seen it when she tried to end it on the plane. When he was screaming her name, and she knew in her very soul that she would rather die than cause him harm, even though she never wanted to leave him.

When her eyes were finally opened, it was almost too late. When Fitz tried to sacrifice his life for hers, and the consequences he suffered for it weighed almost too heavily for her to keep breathing around him, she had taken the out. Practical as she might have been, she hated herself for it. For awhile, she was back to thinking he did, too. That was the problem about the world they lived in now - everything moved so quickly they never had time to heal.

At the Academy, at Sci-Ops, when she suggested that they go traipsing across the world looking for adventure... To say that she got more than she bargained for would have been the understatement of the century, in so many respects.

Just when she thought they were getting back what they had, and maybe even more, that bloody monolith had carried her away to an unknown hell, away from everything she knew and loved. Away from Fitz. In the end, the fact that she thought she would never see him again was the only thing that mattered. She knew he would never give up on finding her, but some days on a dark, sunless planet, lying in the dirt, praying to a God she was never quite sure she even believed in, for food, for water, for a way back to her home, it was hard to hold onto hope.

Even after the darkness, after Will, after she was sure that all was lost, one flare in the tenuous dawn told her all she needed to know: If Leopold Fitz had anything to say about it, she was going home.

How could she ever repay him for that? How could she take his patience and kindness and love, and tell him that she had lost faith? That she had succumbed to the base need for human contact with another man? It had been the hardest thing she had ever had to tell him, but she had to tell him. Because it was Fitz, he deserved her honesty, and her guilt would never be assuaged unless she saved the one she left behind.

The one thing she had realized in this whole mess was how much she couldn't live without Fitz. She had cared about Will, but there was no future for them in reality. He didn't deserve to be stranded on that planet, but she also knew in her heart, swimming with all the things she had never been able to say out loud, that Fitz was her other half. She had never believed all that silliness about soulmates and the like, but maybe it was true. Without him in her life, something was definitely missing. There was a difference between being able to live without someone, and not _wanting_ to.

She had shown that she could, but she had been miserable.

She never wanted to lose him again, and that is why she had given him her phone. She knew if anyone could recover the data, he could, and he would see what she had said and how she felt. That even away from him, from anything he might have mistaken for 'obligation' on her part, she had wanted nothing but him. To see his face again, to hear his voice, to hold his hand, and know that he was near. The fear that she would never see him again was what kept her going. If he was going to find a way back to her, then she had to be alive when he got there.

Now she was standing in the growing sunlight with him, sure not only in his feelings but in her own, but still feeling his restraint. He wanted to give her space and time, an out, but that wasn't what she wanted at all.

There would be time, hopefully, to prove that his love was returned, though it had always been hard for her to come out and say. She didn't want to be afraid anymore. She never wanted him to doubt how she felt again. She wanted to live with him, and love him, and be free to say all the things she had always wanted to say. She was tired of being pragmatic.

Finis


End file.
